George Washington Carver and Everyday Inventivity

Carver painting.

George Washington Carver (b.1864, d. 1943) was one of our greatest African American inventors. Some call him "the peanut man" for the 199 products that he, by his own count, derived from the peanut (Kremer, 1987, 116). These included various oils, gums, paints, food products and packaging materials. He repeated his success with the sweet potato, producing 118 products; the pecan, which yielded 85; and cow peas and soy beans; which each yielded more than 35 (Kremer, 1987, 116). As Carver himself wrote, he invented to help his people thrive: "The rapid growth of industry, the ever increasing population and the imperative need for a more varied, wholesome and nourishing foodstuff makes it all the more necessary to exhaust every means at our command to fill the empty dinner pail, enrich our soils, bring greater wealth and influence to our beautiful South...." (Kremer, 1987, 116).

Carver's creative methods can still teach us a great deal about inventiveness today. One of the most important strategies that Carver used was to collect information from sources that other people overlooked. His most common source was community knowledge and practice. He spent a great deal of time enquiring about what uses people in the street or in the home had already found for the materials he was studying. In fact, these everyday inventions were often the inspiration for his own more refined and sophisticated versions. Carver made no secret of his strategy. "Inspiration is never at variance with information," he wrote; "in fact, the more information one has, the greater will be the inspiration" (Kremer, 1987, 129).

Rug woven by Carter.

Carver's second strategy was to treat the making of all things as something he could and should master. He was a music major in college; he learned to paint so well that his paintings were exhibited at international exhibitions; he made his own paints; he sewed, knitted, and crocheted his own clothes while working his way through school; he took up weaving baskets and rugs and doing woodwork; he mastered botany and agriculture to the extent that he made fundamental contributions to each; and so on. Carver would probably have agreed with the sentiment that there is nothing you can know that isn't useful.

Finally, Carver was a successful inventor because he worked on the principle that nothing should go to waste. In a letter to one correspondent about improving farming productivity, he ended with the following advice in capital letters: "TAKE CARE OF THE WASTE ON THE FARM AND TURN IT INTO USEFUL CHANNELS!" (Kremer, 1987, 126). Whatever other people threw away, Carver looked upon as free material for new inventions.

Carver's experiments with clay provide a good peek into the way in which he applied his strategies. Clay is something that most of us associate with making bricks, pottery or sculpture. There are as well white or "china" clays from which we make fine porcelain and china dishware. Clay is plentiful in the southern states in which Carver worked, and he loved geology, so he was naturally interested in what else one might do with clay besides the obvious. In 1911, he set out to gather enough information to stimulate inspiration.

During the third week in June, Carver found such inspiration on a jaunt into the country around Tuskegee, Tennessee. "I went out into the country Saturday," he recorded, "to make some observations with reference to my work with clay and stopped at Mrs. Pugh's. I found that she had a house with four rooms, all of which were whitewashed with the clay, being perfectly white. She tells me that she has used it for years, and has not used a bit of lime [calcium carbonate, which is a white mineral often used in paints of that time].... The walls and ceilings of her house were white; the door and door facings were a beautiful slate color. She made them this color by mixing a little bit of soot with the [clay] wash. She had several picture frames painted a bright pretty blue; she had used a white clay and mixed a little bit of laundry blue with it. I also found others using it...." (Kremer, 1987, 113)

Whate clay-based paints invented by Carver.

Inspired by these everyday inventions, Carver went home and began applying his strategies to experiments with clay. "I have made a beautiful black color by simply taking some of the clay and mixing a small amount of boiler black with it. By boiler black, I mean the soot that comes from our boilers, which is equivalent to lamp black [a common ingredient for making black paints]. Now, we purchase a great deal of lamp black, which in many instances this boiler black is just as good [as]. All black used in paint is simply some form of carbon, or, in other words, some form of charcoal, with the proper oils mixed with it. Now, with the great amount of coal we burn here, and the large amount of fine soot that we could collect from our boilers, it would pay us to save this instead of throwing it away as we are now doing. It would certainly keep us from buying the very thing we are throwing away..... The more I work with it, the more enthusiastic I am" (Kremer, 1987, 114).

The account quoted above appears in a letter addressed to Booker T. Washington, perhaps the most prominent African American politician and intellectual of the early 20th century. The fact that Carver made his discoveries known to Washington is another element in Carver's success: not only was he unafraid to draw upon the insights of the common man or woman, but he was equally courageous in making sure that those with the power to implement his insights were aware of them. The way he worked, it did no good to invent unless good could come of the invention.

Those in industry call inventions that make good, innovations. And Carver, much more than a prodigious inventor, was a successful innovator. What his example makes clear is that innovation often begins with the everyday inventivity of people like Mrs. Pugh. Innovating is a bit more difficult than merely inventing, but Carver's experimentations with clay show that even genius stands on the shoulders of common folk. What makes Carver special is that he gave back many fold to those from whom he took.

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© Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein 2010

SOURCES
Kremer, Gary R. 1987. George Washington Carver in His Own Words. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.